A Piece of the Action

Thirty-two

January 24

Stanley Moodrow sat at his kitchen table, the Daily News in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other, and listened to the sound of water running in the shower. He hadn’t heard that sound in a long time, not unless he was standing in the tub. He could remember a time when he and his parents had made do with a clawfoot bathtub, remember the weekend his father had decided to add a vertical pipe, a showerhead and a support for a plastic curtain. Max Moodrow had begun the job in a grouchy mood. He’d felt that, considering who actually owned the property, improvements were the landlord’s responsibility. Unfortunately, when he’d brought it up while paying his rent, Ed Boyer had laughed in his face.

“You would maybe like to pay more rent, Max? Perhaps you will vote for a politician to repeal rent control?”

Max Moodrow had spent the whole day (a Sunday, his one day off) assembling a Rube Goldberg contraption of his own design. At the very end, he’d turned on the water with a great flourish only to discover that the valve designed to switch the flow of water from the tub to the showerhead wasn’t working. No matter how hard he twisted the tiny lever, water continued to pour into the bathtub.

By the time he’d given up, it was after six and there was no chance of finding an open hardware store in New York City. Not even on the Lower East Side where Jewish merchants (who closed on Saturday for Shabbes) dared the politicians and the police to enforce the Blue Laws.

Initially, Max Moodrow’s profane howls of frustration had filled the air in their apartment. But not for long. Accompanied by his son (“Stanley, from these things you learn how to be a man, not a bum.”), he’d marched down the block to Igor Melenkov’s apartment and confronted the shopowner in his own home. Melenkov had sold him the defective valve and Melenkov had to replace it. No, he couldn’t come by the store tomorrow morning. He had to work tomorrow. And the next day and the next and the next. If he didn’t get the shower going tonight, it’d have to wait the entire week.

Melenkov had shrugged into his coat and marched back to inspect Max Moodrow’s plumbing.

“You are an idiot, Moodrow. Walve is upside-down. Please in future to stick with hammer and nails. Plumbing is for plumbers. Now, give me wrench and pour for me a wodka.”

Stanley Moodrow recalled watching Malenkov unscrew the various fittings. Malenkov had crooked a finger into the freed valve, extracted a wad of soaked paper, then re-fitted the valve with the handle reversed.

The whole process had seemed magical to five-year-old Stanley Moodrow and it was years before he figured it out. He’d watched Malenkov through childhood eyes, absorbing the information without trying to understand it. The valve must have worked either way. All reversing did was move the handle from one side to the other. Malenkov had either left something inside the valve or failed to warn Max about something left by the manufacturer. His father hadn’t done anything wrong.

Moodrow sipped at his coffee and glanced down at the day’s headline: HUGE DOPE RAID TIES IN LUCIANO. The Feds had conducted simultaneous raids in Philly, New York and Washington, netting twenty-one criminals, thirty-five pounds of heroin and fifty-four pounds of opium. More than the total amount seized in the entire country in 1957.

But, of course, that was the point. There were new records every year. Dope seemed to be unstoppable, like a wall of lava flowing down the side of a volcano. The papers liked to blame it on corruption, but the truth was that no one, not the most ardent cop or social reformer, had the faintest idea what to do about it.

“Morning, Stanley, anything interesting happen last night?”

Moodrow looked up to find Kate, wrapped in a large blue towel, standing in the doorway. Her hair glistened in the harsh light of an unshielded ceiling fixture. The light illuminated the spray of freckles across her cheekbones. It sparkled in her small even teeth.

In an instant, before he could take a breath, twenty-one criminals, thirty-five pounds of heroin and fifty-four pounds of opium fled up to newspaper heaven. Moodrow, his attention riveted to the corner of the towel tucked beneath Kate’s arm, lost all capacity to consider social problems.

“Damn,” he whispered.

“Damn what?” Kate was giggling.

“ ‘Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.’ ”

They made love in the living room, Kate on the couch and Moodrow kneeling in front of it. He held her by the hips as he thrust into her. As if she might fly away if he dared to let her go. He watched her closely, the twist of her mouth, the sharply indrawn breath, the tightly closed eyes. Now she was his. The thought came to him as suddenly as the opening credits in a Technicolor movie. The theatre was dark and then … magic.

Half an hour later, they were sitting across from each other at Moodrow’s kitchen table. Moodrow was buttering a piece of toast as Kate ran a brush through her hair.

“Ya know, I heard the honeymoon suite at the Waldorf was overpriced, but I never expected this.” He waved his toast at the four walls.

“What’d you say, Stanley?”

“I made a joke.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. Would it still be funny if you said it again?”

“It wasn’t funny the first time. You going to work today?”

“No, I’m not ready to go back. Maybe I’ll stick around to comfort Greta after you get through brutalizing her.”

“Don’t feel sorry for Greta. She knows what she has to do. She knew it before I spelled it out last night. Ask yourself this: if she had such a problem with cops, why’d she come to me in the first place? People in this neighborhood don’t go to the police. They handle their own problems whenever they can. And that includes revenge. Me, I’m a cop and I need cooperation. I get it by giving folks a reason to do what they already know is right.”

“It seemed more like the Battle of the Bulge than gentle persuasion.”

Moodrow reached behind his chair and opened the refrigerator door. He pulled a jar of Welch’s Grape Jelly off the shelf, closing the door as he turned back to the table. “You have to do what you have to do, Kate. If there’s another way to get to Jake Leibowitz, I haven’t thought of it.”

“Stanley, do you mind if I ask you a question?” Kate leaned forward, absently rolling the salt shaker between her palms.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. It’s very personal, but I’d like to know the answer.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“From what you told me, it’s obvious that somebody’s going to get Jake Leibowitz. The cops, the mob, somebody. Why does it have to be you?”

“Jesus,” Moodrow whispered.

“Jesus has nothing to do with this. Jesus forgave the thief, remember?”

“Yeah, I heard that somewhere. Look, I gotta get down to Greta’s. As for your question, it’s like asking Roy Campanella why he wants to hit a home run. There’re plenty of cops, detectives, too, who’d spend their tours sleeping at their desks if they could. A paycheck and a pension, that’s all they want. Me, I’m not one of them. It’s my game and I want to play it. I want to be the best. Hall of Fame all the way.”

Pat Cohan glanced at his reflection in the mirror and shuddered.

“This calls for a drink,” he said out loud. The drink, a bottle of Bushmill’s, was already in his hand. He looked at it for a second, then drank deeply before turning back to the mirror.

The alcohol had done nothing to improve the image that stared back at him. His mane was as wild as a real lion’s mane. It stood almost straight out, a thin white halo that looked more ghostly than saintly.

But his mane wasn’t the worst of it. His complexion was red, bright red. He resembled one of the heavily-rouged whores he used to roust when he was working Vice.

He thought about the whores for a moment. Thought about what they’d offered him to avoid an arrest. The memory was pleasant enough, though he wasn’t aroused by the legs and breasts that flitted through his mind. No, what aroused him was the sudden thrust of an entirely different image. He saw his darlin’ Kathleen lying on Stanley Moodrow’s sheets. Her legs were wrapped around his hips and she was moaning as he rammed into her.

“Fuckmefuckmefuckmefuckmefuckmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

Now his face was really red. Flag red. Santa Claus red. Fire engine red. He shook the image out of his mind before they got to something even worse.

“Hair of the dog,” he muttered, pulling at the bottle as he turned away from the mirror. “Now there’s something you’ve got to do, boyo. And you know what it is.”

Pat Cohan walked down the hallway, surprised by his steady gait. The door to his wife’s room was closed, as usual. He could hear her moving inside, hear the monotonous drone as she pursued her various rituals.

“Are ya decent, Rose?” he called, pushing the door open. “Not that I give a damn.”

He found her kneeling on the bare floor. Staring up at the serene smile of a five-foot plaster statue.

“Holy Mary, mother of God,” she droned.

Did she even know he was there? He took a quick drink, then crossed the room and jerked her to her feet.

“A little talk, Rose. That’s what we’re after havin’.”

She turned and looked up at him, a bony old woman in a shapeless black dress. Her gray eyes, he noted, were surprisingly sane. Did that make it harder? Or easier?

“A talk,” she whispered. “Yes, a talk.” She cocked her head and looked at him out of the corner of one eye. “Is it Jesus you’ve come to talk about, Matthew?”

Pat Cohan started. Matthew was his Confirmation name. It was the name she’d called him during the early days of their marriage.

“No, not Jesus, Rose. It’s Stanley Moodrow. It’s the devil himself I’ve come to discuss. He’s ruined our lives and he must be punished. We can’t be lettin’ him have our darlin’ Kathleen, can we? We can’t be lettin’ them fornicate like dumb animals. They’re livin’ in sin, Rose. That’s what the pair of ’em are doin’. Ruttin’ around like dogs in the road.”

Rose Cohan turned back to her tiny altar, lips already moving.

“Not now, Rose. We’ve somethin’ to discuss. After which I promise never to interrupt your prayers again.”

He spun her around, once again struck by her lucid stare, and wondered if she’d been faking it all along. He, like everybody else, including the priests at Sacred Heart, had assumed that she was crazy. Was there a parish that didn’t have its share of Rose Cohans? Of shriveled old ladies mumbling their way to the grave? They were tolerated, their piety never questioned. And if they were stable enough to mop the nunnery basement, so much the better.

“You shouldn’t have made him go, Matthew. Why did you make him go? He wanted to be a priest. He was in the seminary; he didn’t have to go.”

Peter, always Peter. She’d taken that sissy and made him into a holy martyr. Why couldn’t she understand? Everybody in the Department, lieutenants, captains, inspectors, everybody was packing his kid off to fight the war. Younger cops were resigning by the hundreds. They were enlisting.

Meanwhile, his own son played priest in his seminary room. His own son pissed his pants at the thought of Hitler’s tanks.

Better a dead son to bring you honor than a live son to bring you shame. That’s what he’d thought at the time and that’s what he still believed.

“Pete was a hero and a patriot,” Pat Cohan said. “He died like a man.”

“Is that how a man dies? With thousands of other men in the waters off a beach? Is that a hero’s funeral? A letter from the Department of the Army saying ‘presumed lost’?”

He snorted in disgust. “Maybe you’re right. Hero is stretchin’ it a bit. In fact, havin’ known the little coward intimately, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he swam all the way to the North Pole. And ya can stop prayin’ for him. Between all the prayers he said and all the prayers you’ve said, little Peter’s sure to be floatin’ around with the Big Prick himself.”

Rose Cohan started at the epithet. “It’s not Peter I pray for, Matthew. It’s you.”

She turned away, walking back to the little altar, blessing herself before kneeling.

“Well, I guess Baby Jesus hasn’t been listenin’, Rose, because I’m as unrepentant as ever.”

He slid the worn.38 from his jacket pocket as he approached her. Thinking maybe the touch of it against her skull would bring her back to the present. But she continued to pray, her lips moving quickly over the words.

Well, he thought, Rose Cohan isn’t the point anyway. The point is Kathleen, darlin’ Kathleen. The point is what’s mine and what I intend to keep.

He left Rose lying on her own altar, a gory sacrifice to a vindictive god, and strolled downstairs to his den. The telephone seemed to beckon. He raised the bottle of Bushmill’s.

“Here’s to the glories of modern life. Here’s to the death of my lovely wife.”

The alcohol slid down his throat as if it had a life of his own, as if it was eager to radiate its heat to his brain.

It’s a question of last straws, he thought, laughing out loud. Of which last straw is the last last straw.

“The last last straw,” he said, responding as if he’d been called on to recite, “is your last straw. The straw you pluck. The straw you play.”

That’s why Detective Lieutenant Irv Rosten’s phone call hadn’t been the climax it appeared to be. All it had done was bring the problem into focus. He’d been mulling over ways to bring Kate home, anyway. Had thought of nothing else since she’d walked out on him. Rosten’s call had served to sharpen his resolve. Sharpen it by placing it firmly in the present.

“What kind of fucking game are you playing?” That was Rosten’s idea of a greeting.

“Well, I …”

“Don’t bother with the bullshit, Cohan. You figured you’d retire and leave me holding the bag. Well, it didn’t work. Your papers are sitting in Chief Rooney’s desk. They haven’t been processed and they’re not gonna be.”

“Irv, look …”

“I said, don’t bother. You brought me in and it was up to you to protect me. That’s the way it works. You were my rabbi. You had a right to call in your markers, but not to put my head in the noose. I just came out of Chief Rooney’s office and it’s my pleasure to personally deliver the message. Rooney doesn’t want me, Pat. He wants you. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling it’s personal. Rooney wants your ass and I’m gonna give it to him. You ordered me to arrest Stanley Moodrow and I’m willin’ to say so. You were with Joe Faci and Santo Silesi the night Izzy Stein disappeared. I’m willing to say that, too. You shouldn’t have run out on me, Pat. I figured you for a standup guy and you made me into a sap. Now the joke’s on you.”

Pat Cohan grabbed the phone and quickly dialed Moodrow’s number. He had no idea what he’d say if Moodrow answered. Beg, probably. Beg to speak to his own daughter.

“Hello.”

Cohan heaved a sigh at the sound of Kate’s voice. It was going to be all right, now. It was going to be all right.

“Kathleen,” he whispered, “darlin’ Kathleen.”

“Don’t, Daddy. It won’t work. I know the truth.”

“ ‘And the truth shall set you free?’ ” He made it into a question. Not that he cared about her answer. The idea was to keep her talking, to make a link.

“Not free, Daddy, but freer. I used to be imprisoned by lies. From here on, I intend to make my own decisions based on the truth.”

“Ah yes, lies.” He put the bottle to his lips and drank deeply. “I won’t bother to deny ’em, Kathleen. Nor are explanations in order. It’s your mother I’ve called to talk about. She needs to see you. Needs you to dry her tears. ‘First Peter, now Kathleen.’ That’s all she can say, Kate. She’s been crying for the last twenty-four hours and I don’t know how to stop it. Is it possible you could spare a few hours for your poor suffering mother?”

He paused for a moment, listening to the metallic hiss of his own heavy breathing through the receiver. “I love ya, Kathleen. I don’t suppose that makes much difference, now. Why should it, considerin’ the things I’ve been after doin’ to ya? But that’s over. You’ve found me out, girl, and I know it can never be like it was. I know this, but does what I’ve done to ya have to mean that your mother and myself are out of your life forever? For God’s sake, Kathleen, come home for a visit. Talk to your mother. She thinks she’s never going to see you again. I swear before the Almighty that I won’t try to hold you.”

“Okay, Daddy. I have to come back sooner or later, anyway. I need my clothes and I need to settle things between us. Just give me an hour to get myself together before I leave.”

“Thank you, darlin’. Thank you.”

Pat Cohan gently lowered the receiver. He looked down at the bottle in his hand for a moment, then heaved himself erect and slowly walked up the stairs to his wife’s room.

“Top of the mornin’, Rose,” he said. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue? You could at least be polite.”

It’d been months, maybe years, since he’d felt this good. “The last last straw,” he muttered, “is the last straw you play.”

There was an upholstered chair next to his wife’s bed. A useless ornament, really, because she never got up off her knees. He tucked the bottle under one arm, slid the chair across the room until it was facing the door, then sat heavily.

“Any regrets?” he asked himself.

“None,” he answered, putting the barrel of his.38 into his mouth, cocking the hammer, splattering his brains all over the ceiling.